They never expected to see our faces ‘round these parts again, not after what we did in Dallas, and again in San Antonio. But you can’t keep axe-slingers like us away from a good day in the Texas sun. Not when it’s time for the “world’s largest consumer guitar event.” Not when it’s Amigos International. We could smell a Texas-sized standoff coming, and when we finally set our boots down in the home of the world’s largest honky-tonk, Fort Worth, Texas, we readied ourselves for a fight.

If cowboys drove a car instead of cattle, what would it be? A six-by-six Ford F-450 King Ranch with a 21,000-pound towing capacity. Not a 2017 Jeep Wrangler with a leaky tire and a smiley face cover on the spare, but it’s not the horse that makes the man (and they were out of those King Ranches), so we dropped the top and made due, riding into town like dust on the wind.

Fort Worth in early October is like Chicago in late August: hot, sticky, and covered in bugs. Specifically, crickets. Crickets everywhere. So when we arrived we treaded lightly–and carefully–to the Will Rogers Memorial Auditorium, a beautiful, Art Deco masterpiece in downtown Fort Worth where the AC was cranking at a Texas ten, circulating the smells of nearby BBQ and horse racing competitions, and the vintage vibes were a-’bratin’.

We set about commencing to our old tricks, picking up 54 prime pieces like a Roy Smeck Stage Deluxe, A glorious, golden ‘56 ES-295, stately ‘61 Byrdland, a sexy 1960 Strat, and a Cherry 1967 SG Standard, among such a number of notable nabs that a few outlaws from out east seemed keen on a showdown.